Becoming Madame Mao (15 page)

He clears his desk and comes to sit opposite her.

She sips her tea and looks at him. She knows what her eyes can do to a man. She had been told by Yu Qiwei, Tang Nah and Zhang Min. She bathes him with her sunshine.

He breaks the silence. I have heard from Comrade Kang Sheng that you have difficulty comprehending points in my lecture.

Yes, she answers, again sorry to bother you.

My pleasure. He gets up and adds hot water to her cup. As Confucius has said, one ought to take delight in teaching. My door opens to you. Any time when you have questions, just come.

There is formality as they play the teacher and student. Then he asks about her story. Who she is and where she is from. She enjoys the telling. The lines she has rehearsed well. Once in a while she pauses, observes him. He is attentive. She continues the story, adding, changing and skipping certain details. When she mentions the immensity of Shanghai he joins in.

I was there in 1923. It was for the Party's convention, he says, playing with his pencil and drawing circles on a telegram. Our Party only had a handful of members at that time and we were constantly tailed by Chiang Kai-shek's agents.

Where did you stay? she asks curiously.

District of Luwan by Cima Road.

The street that has red-brick black-arch-door houses?

That's right.

The tea-eggs are excellent on that street.

Well, I was too poor to afford a taste.

Which province did you represent at the convention?

Hunan.

Did you have side jobs besides working for the Party?

I was a laundryman at Fu-xing's.

A laundryman? she laughs. How interesting!

The difficult part of my job was not washing but delivery, he adds, as most of my earnings from washing had to be spent on tram tickets, which were so expensive.

Why didn't you stay in Shanghai?

Let's put it this way. I had a hard time swimming in a bathtub.

She gets up to leave. It is dinner time.

Please, stay for dinner.

I am afraid I've been bothering you too much.

Stay. The voice comes from behind as she moves toward the door. Please honor my invitation.

The guards set up the table. Four dishes. A plate of stir-fried pork with soy sauce, a plate of radishes, a plate of greens and a plate of spicy tofu. She wolfs the food down, apologizing for her manners. Life in Yenan is much harder than Shanghai, isn't it? he says. Like a father, he watches her eat. She nods, continues stuffing her mouth.

He picks up a piece of meat and drops it into her bowl. He then comments, I consider the food delicious in comparison to what we ate during the Long March. I have eaten tree bark, grass and rats.

She stops eating and asks to be told more of what it was like to go through the exile.

It was after Tatu, he begins. Our army turned north. In the snow mountains we found comparative safety, yet the prodigious heights weakened everyone. Many perished and pack animals and supplies were abandoned. We were in swampy regions of the grasslands. It was a picture of horror. Near Tibet, my men had been attacked and now we were passing again through a region of hostile tribes. No food was available. Our kitchen heads dug up what seemed to be turnips, which later proved to be poisonous. The water made us ill. The winds buffeted us and hailstorms were followed by snow. Ropes were laid down to guide us across the marshlands, but the ropes vanished in the quicksand. We lost our few remaining pack animals.

She notices that he tries to make light of his words but cannot do so.

He takes a deep breath and continues. A small column was seen walking across a sea of thick foggy grasses, and then ... the whole column disappeared.

She stares at him.

***

When the guard lights the second candle she gets up to say goodbye. It might sound funny to you but I thought you would be arrogant, she says, walking out of his door.

What reason do I have to be arrogant? I am Mao Tse-tung not Chiang Kai-shek.

She nods, laughing, and says she must get going.

The path is not smooth and it is moonless tonight. Little Dragon! Walk Comrade Lan Ping home, will you?

***

It is the third time they meet privately. The stars look like voyeurs' eyes opening and closing. Mao Tse-tung and Lan Ping stand in the descending darkness, shoulder to shoulder. The day has begun to cool. Weeds bend lazily over the riverbank. The reflection of the moon trembles in the water.

I was born in the village of Shao Shan in 1893, Mao says. He describes the landscape of his hometown. It is a land of hibiscus, orchards, serfs and rice fields. My father was a poor peasant. While young he joined the warlords' army because of heavy debts. He was a soldier for many years. Later on he returned to the village and managed to buy back his land. He saved carefully and operated a small trading business. He was petty. He sent me to a local primary school when I was eight but he wanted me to work on the farm in the early morning and at night. My father hated to see me idle. He often yelled, "Make use of yourself!" I can still hear his voice today. He was a hot-tempered man and frequently beat both me and my brothers.

It is at this point the girl inserts her comments. She describes her own father. Says she understands perfectly how he must have felt as a young boy terrified by his father. She looks up at him in tears.

He nods, takes her hands, holds them and continues. My father gave us no money whatsoever. He fed us the most meager food. On the fifteenth of every month he made a concession to his laborers and gave them eggs to go with rice, but never meat. To me he gave neither eggs nor meat. His budget was tight and he counted by pennies.

What about your mother? the girl asks. His face lights. My mother was a kind woman, generous and sympathetic, who was always ready to share what she had. She pitied the poor and often gave them food. My mother didn't get along with my father.

Again the girl responds that she shares the feeling. What could a woman do but weep and endure under such circumstances? The comment let Mao speak of rebelling against his father, of his once threatening to leap into a pond and drown himself. The beating must stop or you will never see me again. He demonstrates the way he yelled at his old man. They laugh.

He describes his turbulent years as a student. He left home at sixteen and graduated from the First Normal School of Hunan. I was an omnivorous reader and I inhabited the Hunan Provincial Library.

To her embarrassment, none of the titles he mentioned has she heard of. Adam Smith's
Wealth of Nations,
Darwin's
Origin of Species
and books on ethics by John Stuart Mill. Later on she would be required to read these books but she would never be able to go beyond page ten.

He seems to enjoy talking to her tremendously. The girl is grateful that he doesn't ask whether she has ever come across one of his beloved books. She doesn't want to go into poetry. She has no sense of it. She is afraid, of a name, Fairlynn. She decides to quickly change the subject.

Sounds like you skipped a lot of meals, she interrupts gently. You didn't take care of your health.

He laughs loudly. You might not believe this, but I was more than fit. In those days I gathered a group of students around me and founded an organization called the New Citizen Society. Besides discussing the great issues, we were energetic physical culturists. In winter we tramped through the fields, up and down mountains, along city walls. We also swam across rivers. We took rain baths, sun baths and wind baths. We camped in the snows.

She says that she would like to hear more.

It's late, I should not keep you from sleep.

Her eyes are bright like morning stars.

Well, I'll tell you one last detail of my story. He takes off his coat and wraps her shoulders with it. No more after this, all right?

She nods.

It was one over-rained summer when all the plants outgrew their sizes. A giant honeycomb constructed by horse bees was discovered on a tree in front of my house. The object was like a mine hung in the air. In the morning the tree was bent over because of the comb's weight—it had absorbed the moisture of the previous night and gotten heavier. After noon, the tree straightened itself back up.

This was a very strange honeycomb. Instead of being filled with honey and wax, it was filled with fiber of all sorts: dead leaves, seeds, feathers, animal bones, straw and rags. It was why the honeycomb smelled rotten at night. The smell attracted bugs. Especially lightning bugs. They swarmed in and covered the comb. By this time the horse bees had gone to sleep. The light of the bugs turned the comb into a glowing blue lantern.

Did you know that when lightning bugs get together they turn on and off their lights in unison?

Every night, the girl goes to sleep with the same fairy tale in which she always sees the blue lantern described by Mao.

The desire to meet in the dark increases. Mao begins to send the guard away. One evening Lan Ping is determined not to be the one to invite affection. She bids good-bye right after dinner. Taking his horse he offers to walk her a mile.

They are silent. She is upset. There are rumors about my spending time with you alone, she tells him. I am afraid I can come no more.

His smile disappears.

She starts to walk away.

I have been trying to use a sword to cut the flow of water, he murmurs behind her.

She turns around and sees him setting a foot in the stirrup.

Suddenly he hears her giggle.

What's funny?

Your pants.

What about them?

Your rear is about to show in a day or two—the fabric has melted.

Damn.

I'll fix it for you if you like.

His smile returns.

T
HE VILLAGE TAILOR IS GLAD
to have Lan Ping as her sewing companion. Lan Ping is working on Mao's pants, which have been brought to her by Little Dragon. She doesn't know where the sewing is going to take her. She is aware that he is lonely and is fascinated by pretty women from big cities, places that rejected him as a student and as a young revolutionary. Later on she finds out that he calls her type of people bourgeois, but he pursues them. He calls Americans imperialists and paper tigers and says they should be put off the face of the earth, but he learns English and prepares himself to one day visit the United States. He tells his nation to learn from Russia, but he hates Stalin.

In 1938 Lan Ping finds herself falling in love with Mao Tse-tung. Falling in love with the poet in him, the poet his heroine wife Zi-zhen tries to kill. Although Mao later on will establish himself as an emperor and take many concubines, in 1938 he is humble. He is a penniless bandit and tries to catch the girl by selling his mind and vision.

One morning his guard comes and leaves me a piece of his scribbling—a new poem he composed the night before. He wants my comment. I unfold the paper and hear my heart singing.

Mountain
I whip my already quick horse and don't dismount
When I look back in wonder
The sky is three feet away

Mountain
The sea collapses and the river boils
Innumerable horses race
Insanely into the battle

Mountain
Peaks pierce the green sky, unblunted
The sky falls
Down the clouds my men are home

She reads his poems over and over. In the next few days the guard will bring more for her. Mao copies the poems in ink in the elegant calligraphy of Chinese ideograms, lucidly arranged.

His scribbles become her nightly treat in which passion speaks between the lines. Gradually a god steps down from the clouds and shares his life with her. He expresses his feelings for his lost love, his sister, brother and his first wife, Kai-hui, slaughtered by Chiang Kai-shek. And his children, whom he was forced to give away between battles and only later found dead or lost. She receives his tears and feels his sadness. What grabs her heart is that she discovers there is no anger in his poems; rather, he praises the way nature shares its secrets with him—he embraces its severity, enormity and beauty.

The tailor gives me a piece of gray rag, which I cut into two large round patches. I stitch them around the rear. The tailor suggests that I thicken the fabric. She says, Make it durable so that it will serve as a carried-around stool.

We sew quietly for a while and then suddenly the tailor asks me what I think about Zi-zhen.

Trying to hide my awkwardness I say that I respect Zi-zhen a great deal. The tailor stops her work and raises her eyes. There is suspicion in the look. Pulling a thread she says slowly but clearly, Mao Tse-tung belongs to the Communist Party and the people. He's no ordinary man to be chased around. He has suffered the loss of his first wife and he is not about to lose his second.

Before I have a chance to respond she goes on. The late Mrs. Mao's name is Kai-hui, for your information. Have you heard of her? I am sure you don't mind me mentioning her, do you?

Please, go ahead.

She was the daughter of his mentor and the beauty of Changsha, her hometown. She was an intellect and a Communist. She lived for Mao. Not only did she support and help organize his activities but also gave him three sons. When Chiang Kai-shek caught her he ordered her murdered. She was given a chance to denounce Mao in exchange for her life but she chose to honor him.

The tailor wipes her tears, blows her nose and continues. Zi-zhen married Mao to fill up the emptiness in his heart. Zi-zhen used to carry around two pistols. She shot with both hands. In one battle she went out and took a dozen enemies. Mao adores her. She is his loyalist. She is the mother of all his children including the ones left by Kai-hui. In order to move on during the Long March they had to give away the children. You have no idea what it felt like to leave your children to strangers, knowing that you might never see them again.

The girl from Shanghai lowers her head and murmurs, I can imagine that.

No, you can't! If you could you wouldn't be doing what you are doing! You wouldn't be stealing other people's husbands!